It's been a busy week but I've found some time to watch the first 2 episodes of Southern Cross. Not my favorite anime show but I like it. It's nice to see it in its true form. I saw it as the 2nd chapter of Robotech when I was younger.

Man, I hope you didn't pay a lot for that. Probably the worst character and mech designs in all of anime. Still blows my mind that it was selected as the second chapter if Robotech. Personally I would have prefered Orguss as it was originally considered, but can see storywise how it didn't make it.

But the transformable hovertanks are ridiculous. Going from an open canopy to what it transforms into is pretty silly. About the only thing I do like are the Bioroid Terminators.

I've watched through the first 15 episodes now. The final 8 should arrive in the mail today from Blockbuster.

No, I didn't pay much. Renting vs. buying has its benefits.

The mech designs weren't the best but I don't think I'd call them terrible. Some of the mecha have a look that makes me think "amateur!" when I see them. Still, I've seen worse. The Spartas transforming hover tanks did seem like a less plausible design but it didn't bother me while watching the show.

I'm enjoying it a lot more than I did when I saw it in its Robotech incarnation. The premise peaks my interest. In fact, I like the story enough to raise my opinion of the overall show. Southern Cross only made it to 23 episodes so it looks like it wasn't exactly a hit in Japan.

I know I won't make a section for Southern Cross at Gears Online. There is only one art book ever printed and I have a copy. It doesn't have a lot of pages, excludes a lot of mecha designs and the ones it shows overlap with other images so much that I wouldn't even attempt to scan and clean them up. The only way to show a lot of the mecha and ship designs would be to get screen caps and I don't want to hassle with that.

Just finished Southern Cross today. Although it wasn't in my top 5 anime TV shows I really liked it. The ending was rather abrupt but I guess you have to expect that from a show that only gets 23 episodes to tell its story. I would have liked to have seen an extra 5 minutes to tie up loose ends but it wasn't a confusing ending like we see so often in more recent anime.

I liked the show but the end was too abrupt. It was so sudden that the conclusion is left up to interpretation. I'll give you my interpretation but someone wouldn't have a hard time arguing against me.

Dess, the leader of the Zor, had activated a system that was in the process of opening up the 3 ancient mounds to somehow "energize" the flowers and effect the whole planet with Zor technology. Seifriet wanted revenge against Dess and that included ruining Dess' plans. Siefriet destroyed the Zor colony ship that was hovering over the 3 mounds. Large pieces of wreckage fell on the mounds and completely wiped out the special flower. Not only that, but the pieces of wreckage also destroyed the machinery that was connected to the flowers that was going to spread the flower's influence all across Gloire (the planet this all happens on).

In the final scene we see the petals from the flowers spreading in the wind after the mounds were destroyed. Some people think this means the flowers were spreading their seeds to grow everywhere. I don't agree. The only thing we see in the wind is flower petals. It never said that the flowers grow from seeds attached to the petals.

As the flower petals spread out from the scene of destruction everyone pauses. The fighting ends as everyone, Zor and human, are captivated by the beauty of the flower petals even as they are startled by the colony ship's explosion. The Zor leadership is dead and the Zor know they don't have the resources to go back into space. The pause in the fighting probably lasts. The Zor have no leaders telling them to keep hating the humans. They have no choice but to learn to coexist with the humans on Gloire.

It's a new beginning. The leader of Gloire's military as well as the Zor leaders are dead. The inflexible, warlike leaders are gone and living together on Gloire is the only option. But the new beginning is tinged with regret. Seifriet is gone, Bowie's father is gone... everyone has lost friends and loved ones.

The way I took the ending was that the flowers were spreading and eveyone would be Zor, so there was a winner; the flowers. The flowers are what turned the first group of colonists into the Zor and running out of the flowers is why the Zor returned and fought the war. It's sort of like the first Godzilla movie; in the end nature wins out, but at a terrible price.